Connecting Your Writing Dots

If you should know one thing about me, it is that I am involved in many things. This is present across the timeline of my life and scatters into my writing. When I first began freelance writing for Associated Content (now Yahoo! Contributor Network) I wrote about what I knew. A cross country road trip with a girlfriend. Tidbits from the local scene in Lancaster. Frustrations with corporate customer service. No topic had one great connection other than it was written by me.

I began thinking about what I knew, and what I knew was how to be cheap. I titled myself the "Queen of Cheap" and that title is still listed on my freelance page. My late husband and I were on a very strict budget and that meant I needed to become creative in ways to live cheaply but still have fun.

Loving to travel, my eyes caught a query on Twitter asking for people to take trips on behalf of a tourism bureau and write about it. So I did. And I did it a few more times after that. Then I figured out I could write directly to tourism bureaus to offer my travel writing services. I had morphed from queen of cheap into travel writer. Interestingly enough, travel writing became a great way to travel cheap!

In the midst of all of this I was still blogging about grief on my Crazy Widow blog. I had become a topical nightmare when it came to writing. I knew this, but it was only until this past weekend, when I went to a Hoots & Hellmouth concert in Bethlehem Pa, that I realized that my writing topics are too random.

Did I want to continue to post my travel writing, cheap living and music reviews on my freelance page when I am working hard to create a home base for all of my writing? On the marketing side of my writing the variety seemed like it might destroy my fluidity in creating a brand of Me.

As I was writing to the manager of Hoots & Hellmouth, to request a meet and greet with them on the basis that I was, in fact, a freelance writer and would love to write about their great music, I had an idea. (run on sentence anyone?) Yes, another one. How could I tie in my grief writing with sharing music? Was it even possible?

Back up a little, again. Friday was the 3rd anniversary of losing my husband. I've been on this path to recapture days that were taken from me in his death. October 28 is one of those days. I wanted to do something FUN that I enjoyed and something that didn't have a great connection with Kevin. A concert 2 hours away with a band he had never heard of was the perfect thing. And I was taking a great friend and my boyfriend.

So I pitched to the manager my desire to discuss recapturing days with Hoots & Hellmouth and to tie the two ideas together. Hoots (yes, that's his last name) met with me and soon we were talking about the death of his father and the impact that had. Boom, connection. Will I now write about it on my blog instead of my freelance page? I just might.

If you're anything like me and are all over the pages of your life, don't hesitate to see that you can make connections. If you find those connections between your passions use them to streamline your brand. If you you want your writing to go somewhere you have to become a brand. Don't be scared. Variety can be advantageous if you know how to connect the dots.

Originally published through Whole Story Media Group.